The most remarkable
hyperbole of
post production
I saw last year was an
unexpected triumph on
A&E Networks’ History
channel, an eight-part
series called “The Men
Who Built America,” produced
by Stephen David Entertainment. It’s
an epic tale of the titanic American industrialists
such as Carnegie, Rockefeller, Vanderbilt
and Morgan—the men who “did build
that!”

But nothing is sugarcoated. From the
devastation of the Johnstown flood to
Edison’s battles with Tesla, this is clearly a
battle for power. As a result, more than 50
million viewers watched the series during
its multiple cable repeats last fall, with 2.6
million tuning in to its first run alone. This is
a 60-pecent increase over the History 4Q12
to date prime average and helped History
become the number one nonfiction entertainment
cable channel.

“Two years ago, we discussed a series on
the Industrial Revolution with Stephen David
Entertainment, but realized that topic
could be deadly,” said Russell McCarroll,
senior executive producer at History . “We
wanted to emphasize the truth more than
the legends, so we decided to focus on the
personalities involved.”

THE TALENT
Despite a budget of less than $1 million
per hour, the production value seen on the
screen vividly recreates the 19th century,
and a lot of that can be attributed to the
magic that Tim W. Kelly, Stephen David’s director
of post production, conjured up in
the edit bay as lead editor and co-executive
producer on the series.

(L to R) Andrew Carnegie, John D. Rockefeller, Cornelius Vanderbuilt and J.P. Morgan, as portrayed in “The Men Who Built America.”

“We had a lot of great editing talent on
this project, like Jonathan Soule and Beatrice
Sisul,” Kelly said. “Their contribution
helped this series emphasize the dramatic
aspect of a docu-drama presentation.”

Although most of the series was shot
in Brooklyn, a significant part of the more
than 1 terabyte of source material Kelly and
his crew had to work with came from various
stock libraries, massaged and enhanced
by the visual effects wizards at Brainstorm
Digital who are already famed for their Emmy-
winning work on “Boardwalk Empire.”

“We were involved from day one,” said
Glenn Allen, co-owner and special effects
supervisor at Brainstorm Digital, “and used
all of our tricks to give TMWBA a big-screen
look, using a hefty mix of The Foundry’s
Nuke compositing software and lots of
matte paintings created in Adobe Photoshop.

For example, during the Homestead
factory riots you see hundreds of workers
manning the barricades. But we actually
had only 40 actors tiled across the scene.
Watch carefully for the man in the white
shirt. He appears several times.”

Rockefeller discovered a way to refine oil that set the worldwide standard.

But perhaps the most spectacular special-
effects scene depicted the great Johnstown
flood of 1889. One of the industrial
behemoths, Henry Clay Frick, a cohort of
Carnegie, had ordered the carriage road
cresting the earthen South Fork dam above
the town to be widened. As a result, on May
31, the weakened structure unleashed 20
million tons of Lake Conemaugh water, killing
2,009 people in its path.

The visual impact of this monstrous
torrent cascading down the valley is unexpected
for a cable channel production.

“It’s all CG water, of course, created
with Hollywood’s favorite water emulator,
Next Limit Technology’s
RealFlow,”
Brainstorm’s Allen
described. “Only
the three men running
off the top of
the dam were shot
with green screen.
The town itself, by
the way, was the famous
Harpers Ferry,
W.V., which we
had to ‘de-modernize’
to fit the era.”

A lot of the
power of “The Men
Who Built America”
was found during
post. Kelly and his editing crew found ways
to expand the script by Randy Counsman,
David C. White, Keith Palmer and director
Patrick Reams, by using the juxtaposition of
images to reveal the inner musings of the
characters.

HEARTLESS VULTURES
For example, at about 1:07 into the first
episode that starts right after the Civil War,
called “A New War Begins,” John D. Rockefeller
is desperate to combat the hegemony
of railroad transportation costs for his oil.
Looking at the network of tubes and conduits
in his refinery, an idea dawns: “If those
pipes can transport oil over short distances,”
he muses, “they could also be used over
long distances…” and he adds coldly, “…to
cut the railroads out of the oil business for
good.”

It’s a phrase that typifies the whole series.
The ultimate goal of these industrial
barons is total domination. Victory at all
costs.

Vanderbilt was one of the first to see how railroads could change how goods are shipped, creating the model for our modern railroads. Copyright 2011 Photo by Zach Dilgard

But “The Men Who Built America” does
not depict all of them as heartless vultures.
The script indicated a scene where Andrew
Carnegie is riding in his carriage to the
opening of his magnificent Carnegie Hall,
but Kelly revealed the industrialist’s inner
conflict by inserting flashbacks to the Johnstown
tragedy.

Played over Carnegie’s face, we see the
townspeople crushed by the wall of water
while their buildings are swept away into
history.

“It was written in the script that Carnegie
was supposed to be conflicted,” Kelly
recalled. “I know Rockefeller’s pipeline reverie
was found in the edit bay. But the subliminal
intercutting in this sequence came
from a collaboration of everyone involved.”

There are other scenes that possess imagery
that echo the monumentality of German
Expressionism. After railroad magnate
Thomas A. Scott’s empire is devastated by
the financial panic of 1873, his former protégé,
Carnegie, comes upon him sitting on a
rail spur in front of two huge rusting steam
engines facing each other on the siding behind
him. Like Scylla confronting Charybdis,
the looming iron hulks epitomize the
frustration, loneliness and ultimate tragedy
of the mindless
pursuit of empire
for its own sake.

Ford made the car accessible to the masses. Copyright 2011 Photo by Zach Dilgard

Surprisingly,
Kelly tells us that
this overwhelming
image was
shot in a real
train yard in
Strasburg, Pa. I
thought it was
the spawn of a
CG artist. But
in this case, reality trumped digital imagination
to create an unforgettable icon of the
series.

Although “The Men Who Built America”
is destined to be repeated on H2 (the second
History channel), it will also air in Europe
this month. The episodes are available
on Amazon, and the whole series will be
released by Lionsgate on Blu-ray disc and
DVD on Jan. 22. It’s well worth watching,
especially if you seek a greater comprehension
of the men who “did build that.”

Jay Ankeney is a freelance editor and
post-production consultant based in Los
Angeles. Write him at JayAnkeney@mac.com.

Print

Email

Share

Comments

Post New CommentIf you are already a member, or would like to receive email alerts as new comments are
made, please login or register.

Enter the code shown above:

(Note: If you cannot read the numbers in the above
image, reload the page to generate a new one.)

The FAA’s current rules and proposed ban on flight over people, requirement of visual line of sight and restriction on nighttime flying, effectively prohibit broadcasters from using UAS for newsgathering. ~ WMUR-TV General Manager Jeff Bartlett